


Incontrovertible

by EachPeachPearPlum



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canon Era, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Jealousy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 16:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EachPeachPearPlum/pseuds/EachPeachPearPlum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lancelot, Gwaine is quite certain, is not perfect. Under the pretty, shiny exterior, he's just as flawed as everyone else, has to be, and Gwaine is going to show everyone that.</p><p>(Or, alternatively, Gwaine is jealous and mean, Merlin worries, and even though Lancelot loves Guinevere, he kisses like he means it)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Incontrovertible

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sharmini](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharmini/gifts).



> I preface this by saying this is not my 'ship. But a dear friend asked for it, and somehow things went from me laughing in her face to me waking up one morning with a sentence in my brain that over the course of three months, give or take, became seven thousand words. Sharmini, this one is yours, and don't ask again, please, because there's only so long I can suspend my disbelief.
> 
> Warnings for bad language and Gwaine being kind of a git. Other than that, I hope you enjoy.

There are few things in Camelot that can be said to be incontrovertibly true. Not the obvious facts of the world, the things that are true everywhere, like the sun rising in the east and water flowing downhill, but real truths. Truths about people and their lives, their loves and their hates, the things they need more than oxygen in their lungs. They are few and far between, but Gwaine knows every person who matters has at least one.

Uther, for example, was a solid ruler, strong and unflinching when it came to doing what he believed had to be done. Just as no one denies this, no one denies his love for his son and daughter, or the fact that his love for the latter has pretty much destroyed him. Really, though, the most important truth to know about Uther is that he is insane, particularly when it comes to magic.

Arthur is shaping up to be a king similar to his father in his strength of will, but he has not been bruised by the same loss that took Uther so many years ago, the loss of a love beyond measure. Arthur’s strength is tempered by this love, and by the faith his people have in him, the absolute adoration of those closest to him. Arthur, for all he can be stubborn and stupid, still knows how to listen.

There are other incontrovertible facts about Camelot, facts that no one can deny. Gwen has the purest heart of anyone in the city, Gwaine drinks too much and fights too readily. Percival is as kind as he is strong, Leon has the levelest head known to man and doesn’t die as easily as he ought to. Elyan is just as good as his sister but has lived enough that he thinks before giving his trust to people, and Lancelot...

Well, there his theory about incontrovertible truths fails.

Because these truths are meant to be unbreakable, the foundations upon which a person is built, the pillars that hold up anything else there is to know about them, and Lancelot? The incontrovertible truth about Lancelot is that he loves Guinevere, loves her more than any person has ever loved another, cherishes her more than the air he breathes and the food he eats and the water he drinks. To Lancelot, Guinevere is more than the sun and moon, than anything in the world, than life itself.

Lancelot loves Guinevere, but he kisses like he means it.

X

Because Lancelot is good, way beyond anything Gwaine can even think of aspiring to be. All of them are, the important people in Camelot, Arthur, Merlin, Leon, Gwen, Percival, Elyan, but Lancelot goes beyond that, beyond simple goodness. He’s pure of heart, pure of soul, and Gwaine just wants to break it, him, scratch through the surface to the man underneath, a man he wants to be just as selfish as the rest of them are underneath all the morality.

He sees how Camelot makes them all feel, safe and protected, home. All living there makes Gwaine feel is dirty.

And so, Lancelot. Gwaine will break him if it’s the last thing he ever does.

X

Trouble is, Lancelot is, or at least appears to be, a perfectly mild-mannered, utterly unoffendable individual. He’s so fucking nice, so polite, and everyone in Camelot seems to adore him.

He greets everyone he sees with a smile, knows more than half of their names after only two days in the city, and helps anyone dumb enough to stand still as he approaches. And Merlin, the most common recipient of Lancelot’s smiles and Lancelot’s kindness and Lancelot’s help, laps it up like he thinks it’s genuine, like Lancelot hasn’t got to be hiding a secret as deep and dark as Merlin is.

And that’s another thing, isn’t it, the fact that not only does Lancelot _know_ , but Merlin knows he knows. Because Gwaine’s a moron, sure, but Merlin, skinny, gawky Merlin taking on wyverns and Morgana and immortal blokes with swords and coming out alive? Gwaine’s a moron, yeah, and he doesn’t need to be told that, damn well knows it, but is Merlin really not smart enough to know that Gwaine can put two and two together and make four, same as Lancelot must have done? But Lancelot gets to know, doesn’t he, gets trusted with Merlin’s secret, gets to be his confidant and his friend and the first person he turns to when he needs help with something.

What makes that bastard so special?

X

Lancelot takes him aside, sometime in their third week of being Arthur’s bitches, when all Gwaine wants to do is drink until he forgets the fact that he was dumb enough to sign on for this crap. “Have I upset you somehow?” Lancelot asks, so well-mannered, so truly apologetic. “If I have, I am sorry. It was not my intention.”

“ _Have I upset you somehow?_ ” Gwaine mimics, imbibing his tone with every ounce of _go fuck yourself_ that he can muster. And then, just for good measure, he says it as well. “You can go fuck yourself.”

Lancelot stares at him, wide-eyed and sort of awful-looking, awed and unhappy and genuinely offended, so much so that Gwaine can only gawp at him as he turns and walks away and that? Really not what Gwaine was expecting.

X

After that, he quits for a few days, drinks himself silly, passes out or falls asleep at the table he’s sitting at and wakes up in the grossly unclean alley alongside the tavern only to go back in again right after. He has coins burning a hole in his pocket, more money than he’s had in his life just waiting to be spent, and if he wants to spend it all forgetting how much he doesn’t fit in this new life he’s living, that’s his business and no one else’s. The whole knighthood thing is far too much effort and he’s done it for as long as he can.

He might have the blood for it, same way as Leon and Arthur do, but he’s a hell of a long way away from having the soul.

X

“How long do you plan to keep this up?” Someone asks, as Gwaine is deep, deep, deep in his cups, and gods alone know how many days he’s been doing this for. He turns, wobblingly, and he shouldn’t be surprised, really, that it’s Merlin there. Merlin always seems to appear whenever Gwaine needs him, whenever Gwaine least expects him.

Must be a magic thing.

“Until I feel better. That a problem?”

Merlin sighs, loud enough that Gwaine can hear it over the noise of the tavern, gesturing to the woman across the bar from them for a drink, although Gwaine knows from experience that he’s probably not going to drink more than a sip. “Depends what it is that’s upsetting you, I guess.”

Gwaine shrugs, then takes a large swallow of his own drink. “Leave it, Merlin,” he says, because he doesn’t want to sit there listening to Merlin trying to help. Merlin, who thinks he’s an idiot, too stupid to know what’s going on, and yeah, the friendship Merlin offers him means such a lot to Gwaine but it feels an awful lot like it means fuck all to Merlin. “You’re not helping anything.”

Merlin looks almost as bad as Lancelot did last time Gwaine spoke to him and yeah, that’s what Gwaine does, isn’t it? He fucks it all up.

“Fine,” Merlin says quietly. “Come find me when you decide you want a friend again.”

He’s halfway across the room before he pauses, turns, and comes back, still looking miserable. “I forgot,” he says, almost without volume. “Lancelot says he’s sorry.”

Right. He should have bloody well known this was about Lancelot.

X

“What?” Gwaine asks, shoving Lancelot back against a wall. “You too good to fight your own battles now?”

“I beg your pardon?” Lancelot says, always so fucking polite, so fucking saintly, and Gwaine wants to bash his stupid face in. “Sir Gwaine, I don’t know what you mean.”

“ _Sir Gwaine, I don’t know what you mean_ ,” Gwaine copies, too busy physically restraining himself from punching Lancelot to think of a better, less used response. “Merlin, you dipshit. You sicced him on me.”

“Are you drunk?” Lancelot asks, and he actually has the gall to sound surprised.

“When aren’t I?” Gwaine answers, and it’s all so bloody useless. There really isn’t any point.

“You know what,” he says, stepping back and letting Lancelot go, “I’m not even surprised you’re the one he trusts with his secrets.”

He can feel Lancelot staring after him as he walks away, can hear him shouting after him. “What does that mean, Gwaine?” he calls, and the concern in his voice is definitely audible. “What are you talking about?”

Gwaine just carries on walking.

X

He wakes up in the middle of the night, the room blacker than pitch, his fire long ago burnt out. The dark isn’t what wakes him, nor is the noise outside or the lack of warmth inside. What wakes him is the presence.

There is someone in his room.

Gwaine isn’t a fool, isn’t vulnerable, never sleeps without at least one blade handy. He can feel the hilt of the closest one under his pillow, but before he has time to get it the person invading his room is on his bed, a hand clamped over his mouth so tight he can barely breathe, arms pinned to his sides by someone sitting on his chest, holding him down.

“Do you see?” Lancelot asks, his voice a furious hiss but still identifiable as him, and Gwaine feels his breath on his face, the hand that isn’t keeping him from calling out reaching under his pillow and digging out the knife Gwaine keeps there. “Do you see how easily I can get to you?”

The knife presses against his neck, just a tad less pressure than it would take to break the skin, and it’s such a fine line, that, one Gwaine didn’t think a man like Lancelot would know, certainly not something he’d expect him to find without light to help him out. A man like Lancelot shouldn’t know this, shouldn’t be able to find the point when fear is at the extreme, fear and terror and no blood, not yet, but the promise that there will be, and there will be so much pain with it.

“You only know I’m here because I wanted you to,” Lancelot says, every exhale making Gwaine’s skin prickle and yes, he is maybe just a little afraid. “If you say a word that could harm Merlin, you will not know. You will not know that I am here, you will not hear me, you will not see me. You will breathe out, and you will never breathe in again. You will die, and I promise in the name of all that is holy it will hurt more than burning.”

He doesn’t ask Gwaine if he understands, doesn’t ask him anything at all, just offers this warning and presses the knife harder against Gwaine’s throat, hard enough that Gwaine knows he will be bleeding. “There will be no second chances,” he says, and then he is gone, not even the shifting of weight as an indication that he’s going to move.

Just gone, and even though Gwaine doesn’t hear the door open or close, by the time he’s launched himself from his bed and opened the curtains to let on a little moonlight, he’s alone in the room, only the cut on his throat as evidence that up until a second ago he wasn’t.

X

But that is it, he realises, wiping the dried blood from his neck come morning, once there is enough light to see it. That is how he wins.

Lancelot doesn’t care what shit Gwaine or anyone else thinks about him, or about the awful things Gwaine has been saying to him. He can carry on as he has been, targeting Lancelot with all his jabs and his vicious words and his rage, and he will never get anywhere. But the people Lancelot cares about are a whole other matter, and if he’s that concerned about Merlin, that prepared to kill Gwaine in his sleep just to protect his friend, how much more defensive is he going to be if it’s Guinevere Gwaine is potentially threatening.

Oh, he thinks, this is going to be so much fun.

X

He starts small, starts careful, no sense in blowing everything up too soon, and it is so incredibly easy. They’re all surprised to see him out in the paddock shortly after sun-up, when he’s been gone for so long. No one looks particularly displeased to see him there, but then they don’t really look all that happy, either, other than Merlin, who comes running over to him instantly.

“You came back,” he says, and Gwaine knows right away that Lancelot hasn’t mentioned what Gwaine said to him or what his response was, because none of that would make Merlin happy. “I’m glad.”

“Out of gold,” Gwaine tells him, lies to him, but then Merlin is the biggest liar of them all so why should that worry Gwaine? “Figure I have to fight to get paid.”

Merlin grins like he can see right through the bullshit, although what he thinks he’s seeing Gwaine really doesn’t know. “Looks like you’ve been doing plenty of that,” he says, fingers not quite brushing the red line on his throat.

“Oh, that,” Gwaine smiles at him, but he isn’t looking at Merlin. He’s looking at Lancelot, standing behind Merlin, so much warning in their locked gazes. “Wasn’t there when I went to sleep, but then when I woke up this morning...I’m telling you, mate, it might as well be magic, for all I can explain it.”

Merlin’s still grinning, but there’s something uneasy to it, something less than it should be. “As if anyone could be stupid enough to use magic here for something like that,” he says, and Gwaine honestly has no idea how he could think that’s at all convincing.

“As if anyone could be stupid enough to use magic here at all,” Gwaine echoes. “As if.”

X

The second time there is no knife, no warm breath on Gwaine’s face, no silent attack in the dark. Instead, Gwaine opens the door to his room and ambles in, only to find it slamming closed behind him and Lancelot stepping out of the shadows.

“I told you there would be no second chance,” Lancelot says.

“You also told me I’d never see you coming,” Gwaine answers, and he doesn’t much doubt that Lancelot could kill him without his knowing it was going to happen, he just knows it isn’t going to happen right now, so what reason does he have to be afraid. “So which one is the lie?”

“Neither,” Lancelot says. “I’m just reminding you not to waste your first chance. Talk to Merlin if you wish, just do not do so when others might hear you.”

That, though, that is too much. Lancelot might be saintly, might be the reason Arthur decided to knight them all, might be the man Arthur points when he says _look, this is what you should be_ , and he might be the one Merlin trusts enough to share his secrets with, but he is not Gwaine’s master, and there is nothing that Gwaine needs his permission for.

“If I want to speak to Merlin, I will,” he says. “I don’t care if the whole fucking kingdom thinks you’re perfect, but you have no control over who I talk to or what I talk to them about.”

“So why haven’t you told him that you know?”

Gwaine retreats as quickly as his anger does with that question, because sure the answer has to be obvious. “If Merlin wanted me to know, he’s had plenty of opportunities to let me in on his secret. Until he does, I’ll just carry on being as stupid as he thinks I am and as untrustworthy as you do.”

“I see,” Lancelot says, and the look of pity he leaves Gwaine with is worse, far worse, than the promise of death that started this conversation.

X

It was a mistake, Gwaine realises very shortly, to give away how disgusted he is by the fact that Lancelot thinks he needs to threaten Gwaine’s life to keep him from telling anyone about Merlin. It should be obvious that it’s unnecessary, since Merlin’s pretty much the only reason Gwaine has stuck around in Camelot, some weird combination of friendship and hero-worship and maybe, yeah, in the early days there was something like a crush, too, but it wasn’t going to go anywhere, ever, so what was the point in clinging on to it?

So it should be clearly unnecessary, but apparently it wasn’t, and now that Lancelot realises Gwaine is never going to endanger Merlin at all, that way of getting at him is gone. Gwaine can insinuate what he likes about Merlin’s magic within Lancelot’s hearing, damn near actually tell people what Merlin is, and Lancelot barely blinks. He knows where Gwaine will stop, where the line is drawn, and it’s no fun at all causing Merlin anxiety when it’s not even getting a rise out of Lancelot.

It’s time, therefore, to move on to target number two.

X

Of course, threatening Gwen would be unutterably moronic, even Gwaine is smart enough to see that. He could probably hold his own against Lancelot, Arthur _or_ Elyan, at least long enough to point out that he wouldn’t actually do harm to Gwen, but all three of them together would kill him in a matter of minutes, if he was lucky. And it would be lucky, because if they didn’t kill him, Gaius dotes on Guinevere, enough that he would probably abandon his commitment to healing people and instead find some particularly unpleasant way to bump him off. Not to mention Merlin, who is probably the most powerful man Gwaine has ever met, and whilst his imagination doesn’t particularly run to good lies, Gwaine reckons he could probably excel at a spot of torture if he had a good enough incentive.

So no. Even Gwaine isn’t enough of an idiot to threaten Gwen.

Flirting with her, on the other hand, is absolutely fine, and exactly Gwaine’s kind of stupid.

X

Flirting with Gwen is fucking pointless and is only going to end in tears.

Sadly, this realisation only makes itself apparent _after_ Arthur attempts to disembowel Gwaine.

X

Three months to the day after they reclaim Camelot, Gwaine gives up, finally ready to add another truth to his collection; Lancelot is perfect. Gwaine will never break him, never scrape through the shiny exterior to the filth underneath, because there isn’t any. Lancelot is perfect.

After so long, accepting this is almost a relief.

X

“Well, what did you think was going to happen?” Merlin asks him, rolling his eyes at Gwaine over a disappointingly frothless pint, ostensibly bought to sooth his wounded pride (and, for that matter, bruised stomach, and Gwaine thanks all that is good in this world for the invention of armour, otherwise he wouldn’t have a stomach to be bruised). “If you proposition Gwen, you have to know someone’s going to hurt you.”

Gwaine downs his drink, waves his hand vaguely in the direction of someone serving for another, then decides he might as well look after Merlin’s while he’s waiting. It’s not like Merlin’s going to drink it, anyway, and he’s not exactly fighting to get it back either. “I knew that, yeah,” he says, earning himself Merlin’s you’re _even more stupid than I thought you were_ look, the one he sends at Arthur almost every time the prince turns his back. Explaining is a good idea, Gwaine decides, because there’s no way he deserves that look; he’d be the last person to call himself a genius, but he’s a whole lot brighter than Arthur, or at the very least a damn sight more observant. “I wanted it to be Lancelot.”

Merlin looks at him like this makes matters no clearer at all (and he thinks _Gwaine_ is the idiot), so Gwaine elaborates further. “I had this theory, right, that Lancelot was just as fucked up as the rest of us if you dug deep enough, scraped past all the shiny, noble bullshit. ‘Cept I did, and all that’s there is more bullshit. However far down you go, there’s no ugly.”

The look on Merlin’s face has gone from being concern at Gwaine’s apparent idiocy to just concern, and something that feels a whole hell of lot like pity, and fuck that, Gwaine decides. Fuck. That.

“Lancelot,” he says, draining the last dregs of Merlin’s drink as he stands up, “is fucking perfect, and it makes me _sick_.”

It’s only when he turns to leave, to stagger back to his room and sleep off the ale and the ache of the bruises painting his stomach, that he sees Lancelot standing well within hearing distance, looking like this truly grieves him.

X

“Is that really what you think of me?” Lancelot asks, somehow making his way from the tavern to the citadel far faster than Gwaine, who has long ceased expecting the fact that this is his room, his and his alone, to mean anything to anyone.

“You telling me it’s not true?” Gwaine answers, balancing on one leg while he tugs his other boot off, then swapping feet, because he might as well carry on like Lancelot isn’t there.

“Of course it isn’t,” Lancelot says, and it’s not just the perfunctory dismissal of a lesser man, a denial to which there is no feeling. He says it like it’s as incontrovertible as all the truths Gwaine collects, perhaps even more so, and Gwaine truly cannot fathom it.

“How did you meet Merlin?” Lancelot asks, and the logic behind that leap is as beyond Gwaine’s grasp as the reasons why Lancelot could think himself anything short of perfect. He can go with it, though, if only because arguing just seems too much effort.

“Jumped into a fight that wasn’t any of my business. Helped him and Arthur out.”

“And how did I meet Merlin?” Lancelot replies, and Gwaine, beginning to realise how long of a conversation this is going to be, sits down; Lancelot, apparently taking this as an invitation it very much isn’t, copies him.

“Yeah, you’re gonna have to answer that one yourself. Not a mind reader.”

Lancelot smiles, then crosses his legs in order to untie first one boot and then the other, which is really a demonstration of far more comfort than Gwaine is happy with. “I, as you so eloquently put it, jumped into a fight that wasn’t any of my business, in order to help first him and then Arthur. I also lied, encouraged Merlin to risk his standing in Camelot, if not his life, by forging a seal of nobility for me, and ended up banished from the kingdom and threatened with death if I returned. A familiar story, is it not?”

“What are you trying to prove, Lancelot? You could have stayed that first time, if you’d wanted to, after you saved Arthur.”

“But I didn’t. Merlin saved Arthur. What sort of friend would I have been if I’d taken what I wanted at his expense?”

Gwaine wishes, more than he has words for, that he had a drink handy, or possibly a bucket, because really. Really. “I used to think you couldn’t get anymore nauseating,” he says, and actually, to hell with a drink, he mostly just wants to sleep and wake up a year ago, before Merlin and Camelot and this whole shitty mess. “Then you go and say something like that. How do you not hate yourself?”

“What makes you think I don’t?”

Gwaine has a quip ready, considers it his personal duty to always have one ready, but the sheer sincerity in Lancelot’s...everything freezes him. _Oh_ , he thinks, wondering how it hadn’t hit him before, how he hadn’t realised. “Why?” he asks, before he can think better of it, before he considers how much he’d hate it if someone asked him the same question.

Lancelot smiles at him, the sorrow in it even more painful than the absolute truth of his last sentence. “The second time I met Merlin,” he continues, like the last two minutes of conversation never were, “I was fighting for a man named Hengist. A vile man, complete brute, and I would like to say I didn’t know this of him when I signed up, but I did. The rewards offered were rich, and I had lost hope that I could ever be anything more than that.”

He pauses, looking darker than Gwaine feels, sometimes, on the days where he skips training and drinks instead, the days where he feels the need to push and push until the noble people around him break, and he regrets bringing this whole matter up. Lancelot is too good for this, should not feel the same bleak hopelessness that festers inside Gwaine, and that this demonstration of it is Gwaine’s fault is just another brick in the guilt that weighs him down.

“Lancelot,” he says, quieter than he usually is, apologetic, even if he’ll never say it, “you don’t have to tell me this. It’s not any of my business.”

“I do,” Lancelot tells him, his eyes on the fire flickering in Gwaine’s grate. “The first time I fought a man in Hengist’s cage, I let him live. I thought that was mercy, and I will regret it until I die.” He pauses, like he’s expecting Gwaine to ask what the result of Lancelot’s mercy was, but he’s not going to. Gwaine has seen enough of the horrors men do to one another, has fought in a pen like the one Lancelot speaks of; he doesn’t need, doesn’t want, to know. “After that,” Lancelot continues slowly, “I killed every time.”

Gwaine waits for him to continue, sure that he will, because this is not the sort of story someone can tell part of and then just stop, particularly like this, with no attempt at justification of his actions, no presentation of arguments and reasons, meant to convince the speaker as much as his audience. But it’s bloody Lancelot, isn’t it, and he’s never going to justify this, never going to try, and Gwaine knows he knows why. A lesser man would, Gwaine would, but Lancelot won’t, because no amount of justification will ever be good enough for himself, and if Lancelot himself can’t believe it, there’s no way he can try present it to anyone else.

“Why’d you stop?” Gwaine asks eventually. “Fighting for him,” he qualifies, and then qualifies again, because he truly does believe Arthur has the power to be different, better, than any man Gwaine has previously sold his sword to, “For men like him.”

“Someone believed I was better than that,” Lancelot says, and Gwaine wonders if anyone else would know the difference between that and _someone made me believe I was better than that_ , if anyone else would take it as further proof that, even now, knighted and noble and the best Camelot has to offer, the man Lancelot sees in his reflection is nothing like the one the rest of them see when they look at him. “Her faith is misplaced, but I would die before I let her know that.”

Gwaine doesn’t know what to say to that, except maybe the truth. “She’s an idiot,” he says quietly, as much honesty in it as he can muster, allowing himself to shuffle far enough forwards in his chair to reach out and take Lancelot’s hand in his own. “If I was her, there’s no question as to who I’d pick.”

“Really, Gwaine,” Lancelot answers, just a whisper of exasperation to it, but he smiles anyway.

X

“But,” Lancelot says, after a silence that, for once in his life, Gwaine doesn’t feel an overwhelming itch to fill, “I guarantee you, Gwaine, that for every shameful deed in your past, you are not the only person in this room to have done it.”

Gwaine swallows, and even if he’d been able to hold Lancelot’s gaze throughout the entirety of the silence that should have been awkward but wasn’t, now he has to look away, his eyes dropping down to stare at where their joined hands rest on Lancelot’s knees.

Lancelot squeezes his hand once, then frees his own, standing up and clapping Gwaine on the shoulder. “Goodnight, Gwaine,” he says softly, and is most of the way to the door before Gwaine can realise just how much he doesn’t want to be on his own here.

“Wait,” he calls, standing up himself. “If that’s why you wouldn’t stay before, why are you here now?”

Lancelot smiles at him, opening the door and making to step through it. “A friend asked for my help,” he says. “I think you’re familiar with that story too, are you not?”

Gwaine can’t help but answer his smile with one of his own, even as he knows that’s not really much of an answer at all. Before he can question further, though, the door is swinging shut on Lancelot’s back, the faint clink of the dropping latch feeling very much like an end to the discussion.

X

They fight the following morning, with the weight of mail and the crash of steel and every ounce of their souls in their hands as the world whirls sky blue and grass green and Arthur’s red around them. Gwaine grins as he tosses barbs and brutal words at Lancelot, words that slide straight off Lancelot’s skin like water off a duck’s back, and it matters not a whit to either of them.

For the first time in what may well be years, Gwaine makes an effort to fight fair. He wouldn’t in a real battle, no chance of that at all; in real life he fights like he wants to win, like he wants to live, and if that means a sneaky elbow to the jaw or knee to the groin of his opponent, Gwaine is a long way from being above that, but this isn’t real. This is Lancelot, who makes fighting look like a dance, noble and elegant and yet so much more passion and vitality than the boring steps Gwaine learnt as a child, twirling his sister around the hall of the grand house their father’s replacement cast them out of. This is Lancelot, and the sort of dance Gwaine actually wants to be a part of.

Lancelot steps forward, the blade in his hand curving down, around, lower than Gwaine can block with any ease. Stepping away doesn’t feel like the concession it usually would be, though, particularly when he moves round Lancelot and catches a glimpse of Merlin standing just behind the fence, looking so deeply anxious Gwaine can’t help but laugh.

“What is it?” Lancelot asks, sounding no less breathless than Gwaine feels.

“Merlin,” Gwaine answers, circling Lancelot, forcing him to turn on the spot just so that he can have someone to share his delight at Merlin’s expression with. “Looks like he thinks we’re about to kill each other.”

“That,” Lancelot says, “Or shag each other silly right in front of everyone,” and takes Gwaine’s moment of shocked stillness as the perfect opportunity to knock him on his arse.

He offers him a hand up again afterwards, but that is completely not the point.

Still, it’s an idea, though, and when Gwaine’s takes Lancelot’s hand and lets him pull him to his feet, it’s no effort at all to fake a lack of balance, stepping right up into Lancelot’s space, a hand on either side of his waist as he pretends to wobble. “Ah,” he says, mouth almost at Lancelot’s ear, quiet enough that he’s sure no one else will hear them, “but the real question, Sir Lancelot, is do you want to?”

Some wild, insane whim has his teeth nipping briefly at Lancelot’s earlobe before he wheels back and away, not willing to face the disappointment he suddenly realises will come with Lancelot’s rejection, even though he would have sworn mere seconds ago that the question was meant only as a joke.

X

He’s still breathing heavily when he reaches the edge of the field, hopping up on to the top bar of the fence to perch beside Merlin. They’re about of a height like this, Gwaine balancing so far up off the ground, so when he turns to look at him, he’s met immediately by Merlin’s continued look of concern.

“Give us that,” he says, gesturing at the flask of water in Merlin’s hands. It’s supposed to be for Arthur’s use only, as Merlin usually points out – the rest of them are supposed to either fend for themselves or use the pail of water far, far across the field from them –, but today he just hands it over, possibly still too baffled to protest.

“Are you...?” Merlin asks as Gwaine takes a large gulp of water, not actually managing enough words for it to really count as a question.

“Am I what, Merlin?” Gwaine answers, and Merlin’s look of worry is still just as amusing as it was before, enough so that he’s fighting a grin as he says it. “I mean, knowing me, the answer’s probably yes, but if you want to know for sure, I’ll need a few more words than that.”

“Lancelot,” Merlin says, inexplicably, Gwaine feels, since Lancelot is one thing he obviously is not. “I mean, are the two of...is he your...Are you sleeping with him?”

Gwaine sucks in a breath – forgetting he still has a mouthful of water – and splutters, coughing enough that Merlin has to whack him painfully hard on the back, almost shoving him off the fence, but at least it gets him breathing again. “No,” he says, still startled and short of breath. “No, Merlin, I am _not_.”

“Oh,” Merlin says. Then, “You just bit his ear.”

“Nipped,” Gwaine corrects, because it seems the easiest response, certainly easier than trying to summon up some explanation as to why. “Biting would have hurt, and he’d probably have hit me.”

“You’d probably deserve it,” Merlin points out.

“When don’t I?”

Merlin laughs, somehow not realising that Gwaine isn’t joking, then sobers slightly, reaching for the flask in Gwaine’s hands. “It’s a shame, though,” he says, after quite a while. “It’d be a good influence.”

“I don’t need to shag Lancelot for him to be a good influence on me,” Gwaine said dismissively. “Think he manages that just by breathing.”

Merlin looks at him, eyes wide in that way that makes him look just slightly demented. “I meant on him,” he says, patting Gwaine’s shoulder. “Lancelot needs some fun. You’ll be good for him.”

By the time Gwaine thinks to question the definiteness of that sentence, _will_ rather than _would_ , Merlin is halfway across the paddock, ditching Gwaine to dance to Arthur’s tune yet again.

X

He expects Lancelot to find him later in the day – when they’re dismissed from training, maybe, or after lunch, since neither of them has patrol that afternoon –, if only because Lancelot wants to yell – or whatever the Lancelot equivalent of yelling is – at him. In hindsight, Gwaine knows his behaviour was kind of inappropriate, and not just in the way most of what he does is. Everyone in the whole kingdom, if not the entire world, knows how gone on Guinevere Lancelot is, and Gwaine shouldn’t have been flirting with him quite so blatantly, at least not in public. Merlin can’t have been the only person to notice, the only one to make false assumptions.

Still, Lancelot doesn’t come looking for him, and when the two of them happen to cross paths around the castle, something that seems to happen far more often than Gwaine realised before today, he doesn’t seem to have any inclination to talk to him, although he doesn’t seem in any way hostile or angry.

And then, now, when it’s dark out and Gwaine has decided to write off the entirety of today as a waste, skipping the drinking he usually gets up to in an evening and just going to bed, Lancelot shows up.

“Good evening,” he says quietly, just opening the door and ambling on in, like it’s his own bedroom or something.

“Do you walk into everyone’s room like this?” Gwaine asks. “Or am I special?”

Lancelot laughs, seeming oddly relaxed for someone Gwaine was sort of expecting to not-quite-shout at him. “I believe you asked me a question this morning,” he says. “Would you like an answer?”

Gwaine stands up, because he has this bizarre theory that standing up makes difficult conversations easier somehow. “If it’s a no, I’d rather you just left it, actually,” he says.

“Could you give me a little more credit than that, please, Gwaine? If I wasn’t interested, I would have just ignored you. Most people do, after all.”

Gwaine sits down again, somewhat abruptly, but Lancelot looks determined in a way that makes Gwaine’s legs feel slightly less stable than usual. “Are you serious?” somehow manages to come out of his mouth before he can stop it, and Gwaine is totally appalled by how far from suave he sounds. “I mean, Guinevere?” he adds, attempting to sound slightly less...inexperienced.

“Guinevere is happy,” Lancelot says, crossing the room to sit next to Gwaine. “I would never seek to change that.”

“But you love her, don’t you?”

“Are you complicating this because you think it’s amusing or because you’re not actually interested?”

“Oh, believe me,” Gwaine says, sounding far too honest and obvious, but then when Lancelot knows all his ridiculous, petty jealousies and has apparently managed to rise above them, it hardly matters all that much. “Believe me, Lancelot, I’m interested. I’m complicating it because I didn’t think you were.”

Lancelot leans in, almost too close for Gwaine to see him rolling his eyes. “Do _stop_ talking, Sir Gwaine,” he says, placing a hand on the back of Gwaine’s neck and, actually, Gwaine thinks shutting up is really quite a good idea.

And there it is, the truth about Lancelot, the one that wipes out everything else Gwaine has noted about him. Lancelot’s mouth moves in on his, and Gwaine couldn’t care less that this is the most sickeningly noble man he’s ever met, that Merlin thinks Lancelot is worthy of keeping his secret when no one else is, that he’s spent months being a dick because he can’t handle how much better a person than him Lancelot is.

Lancelot loves Guinevere, yes, like the plants need the rain and the sun, like men need food and drink and air and shelter. He loves her, but he kisses like he means it and Gwaine doesn’t have a problem with that at all.

“There,” Lancelot says softly, pulling back far enough to talk and not a hairsbreadth further, although it still feels quite far enough. “Is that interested enough for you?”

Gwaine laughs, and it’s almost embarrassing how shaky a sound it is. “I don’t know,” he says, because Lancelot might be perfect but he’s not getting the last word, not if Gwaine has anything to do with it. “You should probably try again, just to be sure.”

X

Gwaine wakes slowly, sleep clinging to his mind and limbs for a long time, warm and comfortable and secure; Gwaine doesn’t think he’s woken up feeling this safe since he was a child, before his father died. How odd that this time it should be in the arms of a man who has threatened more than once to kill him, a man who, less than a week ago, Gwaine would have sworn he hated.

“Good morning,” Lancelot murmurs, pressing a kiss as soft as his words to Gwaine’s shoulder. “Sleep well?”

“Mmm,” Gwaine answers, snuggling down further under his blankets, nestling back against Lancelot, not yet ready for full and proper sentences. “Time is it?”

“Late enough that we need to get up if we want to eat before Arthur wants us out on the field.”

Gwaine shuffles back further, fidgeting in a way that has no chance whatsoever as being taken as anything other than deliberate, feeling a hitch in Lancelot’s breathing, warm upon the back of his neck. “Chances of me persuading you to skip training?”

Lancelot chuckles softly, even as he slides his arm free of Gwaine’s waist and slips away from him. “Minimal, I’m afraid,” he says, which is pretty much what Gwaine was expecting. “I predict, however, that they’ll increase dramatically tomorrow, on one condition.”

“You know, for a moment, I really liked that sentence,” Gwaine says, but he’s getting up anyway, knowing that Lancelot knows enough to interpret this as him asking what the conditions are.

“Tell Merlin you know about his magic,” Lancelot says, and when Gwaine turns to stare at him in surprise, he’s already fully dressed and ready to go. “He’ll be pleased to hear it, anyway. He hates it being a secret.”

“Just to clarify,” Gwaine says, dressing slightly slower than Lancelot, but then he’s nowhere near as fond of responsibility and duty and punctuality as Lancelot is. “You, Sir Lancelot, the most noble and virtuous man in Camelot, are using sex and the promise of a long, lazy morning in bed to bribe me into doing something.”

Lancelot blushes, but he doesn’t deny it, not in slightest, and when Gwaine grins at him, he smiles back at him.

Wow, Gwaine thinks. Merlin was seriously wrong about that whole ‘good influence’ thing.


End file.
